All-or-None Elements and Mathematical Models for Sociologists

Abstract

preserve of a few strategists who make their own ground rules, it behooves all of us to take a more active part in theory-production. The persistent lack of a widely accepted set of tested propositions about human group behavior-an interdependent, internally consistent, and open-ended body of truth about relationships that goes by the name of systematic theory-is a hindrance to more rapid sciencebuilding in sociology. It means, for instance, that we are forced to direct most of our investigations toward individual theories, limited hypotheses, and similar bits and pieces of the grand design. This does not, or should not, relieve any of us of responsibilities for improving as best we can the conceptual and theoretical superstructure of our discipline. To fulfill its dynamic and seminal purpose, systematic theory must be built by many for mass consumption, not by the few for limited circulation. Therefore, I suggest that the gap created by the abolition of theory as a separate field might profitably be filled by a session which would work on the larger problem of reconciliation of theories from all fields of our investigation. Unless such a working synthesis can be put into concrete form soon, the centrifugal forces now at work in sociology may scatter it all over the academic countryside before the end of the century.